« Why John McCain Really Wasn’t Tortured & Other News On The Bush Torture Regime
The Freddie-Fannie Gamble »



Olbermann’s Exit Raises Questions of Journalistic Boundaries

September 8th, 2008
By JAZZ SHAW, Assistant Editor

Print Print

As the New York Times reports, MSNBC is showing Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews the door in terms of election news coverage. Reactions to the announcement were as swift and varied as the responses the pair elicited from their fans and detractors on a daily basis. John Aravosis expressed disgust, saying that the network “fell for the Republican’s crap about ‘bias’ [and] caved in to the Republicans.” Ed Morrissey wondered if they “finally just [got] tired of these two credibility killers?” In one of the strangest responses, Taylor Marsh bemoans the loss of Olberman “just when Democrats need [him] most” but assign the blame to Keith’s unfair bias against… Hillary?

Questions about Olbermann seem, at least to me, fairly silly. Back when Keith first popped up on my radar with his “Special Comment” segments on MSNBC, I found myself almost pleasantly shocked. “Wow!” I thought, “There’s a news guy who’s really fired up about something and really stepping outside of the normally neutral tone of news coverage.” But it quickly became obvious that this wasn’t a “normal news guy” having a brief moment of outrage. Olbermann was always outraged and it was always against George W. Bush and the Republican Party. To pretend that he wasn’t heavily biased in favor of the Democratic Party is, quite simply, to deny reality.

Matthews was a different story in my view. He took his “Hardball” theory of news coverage well past the nth degree, and brought it into every aspect of his time on camera. But I saw him employ it against people of both parties on a regular basis. The problem was that he would use it no matter what the question was. A guest could comment on how fortunate they were that the weather was nice for a given campaign event and Matthews would find reason to pound on the desk, shake his finger in their face and begin spewing barometric pressure readings with spittle flying from his mouth.

That’s not to say that these two reporters or MSNBC are unique in the marketplace. I watch both that network and Fox News on a regular basis, just to see what both sides are up to. If you think that Bill Kristol or Brit Hume have ever given a fair shake to a Democrat on Fox as compared to their treatment of Republicans, then you’re as far out on the fringes as anyone who thinks Olbermann was fair and balanced.

This year I have had the sometimes dubious “pleasure” of conducting a number of interviews with politicians, figures of political interest, and advisers from the McCain and Barr campaigns. I can assure you that it’s been an educational experience which has led to bouts of introspection, self-doubt and questions about the nature of journalism. Many of these quandaries apply to the performance of Matthews and Olbermann as well. One of the chief issues, at least for me, is the question of how and where one draws the line between an “interview” and a “debate.” When you invite someone to speak to you for purposes of a published article or radio program, you’re going to have to ask them questions, and you can never know for sure what sort of answers you’ll get. If the subject provides some real jaw-droppers, is it your job to immediately call them out and argue with them? Or do you let the answers stand as given and then choose to comment on them later? When does a “follow-up question” turn into an attack on the subject’s credibility?

An excellent example came when I had the occasion to interview both Silverio Salazar and John Martin. They were, respectively, a former Hillary supporting Democrat now voting for McCain and a Republican backing Obama. Each of these subjects said some things which absolutely had my head spinning, but I had to make the choice to just record their answers, publish them for you here, and comment on them after the fact. I caught quite a bit of flak from the readers in both cases, and it turned into one of my favorite experiences as a TMV author when I was accused of being “in the tank” for both McCain and Obama in a 72 hour period. Believe me; sitting on your hands during the answers given by some subjects is not easy. Martin was interviewed as part of our weekly radio show, and there were a couple of points where my co-host Cindy had to be restrained with a straitjacket and ball gag, but to her credit, she managed to maintain her composure for the entire thing.

Everyone, including television journalists, has their own political opinion and preferences. How much of that should be allowed to bleed through in the course of reporting? When does a news report turn into an editorial, and at what point does an editorial become a partisan screed? Olbermann clearly crossed the screed line far more than once too often, but did he add more spice to televised political coverage? Or did he poison the well?



This entry was posted on Monday, September 8th, 2008 at 7:54 am and is filed under Journalism, Fox News, Chris Matthews, MSNBC, News Media, Bill Kristol, Brit Hume, MSM, 2008 Elections, Politics, Media Criticism, Cable Talk Shows, TV News, Media, Television. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Viewing 27 Comments

    • ^
    • v
    Yeah, that's the big question for journalists, isn't it? What crosses the boundaries of journalistic integrity, and what doesn't? Why do we have this very anal obsession with unbiased media, anyway? I mean, clearly Olbermann crossed the line, and there are others who are just as bad. But I mean ordinary reporting- why does it have to be totally impartial, as if the person presenting it didn't have biases of their own that would end up subtly skewing the results?
    • ^
    • v
    I'm guessing the key word is "subtle" there. There's probably a limit on just how subtle you have to be before you cross over those lines which nobody defines for you, and only the viewing / reading / listening public will wind up being the final arbiters on what's acceptable and what's over those lines.
    • ^
    • v
    There was no question of their liberal bias, more liberal than the norm among journalists and editors in the networks, which is often far from subtle. They were worse than normal this year, and what was worse than the blatant liberal opinion and politics in place of "objective" reporting was what Keithy did when Obama made his big speech to end the Democratic convention. The Obama campaign (stupidly) released the text of the speech before the speech itself was made by Obama, and, *** ON THE AIR ***, our pal Keigthy not only openly gushed about the speech and about Obama, but he READ EXERPTS OF THE SPEECH ON THE AIR before the speech was made. All of us in the group that was awaiting Obama's speech, both liberal and non-liberal viewers, began shouting at the television. He was disgusting.
    • ^
    • v
    This is less a matter of left, right or center. These guys were inappropriate outside of their roles as commentators, and Fox News is Exhibit A in this regard. MSNBC did the right thing. Fox, of course, never will.
    • ^
    • v
    Tom Brokaw, Brian Williams and even David Gregory were openly embarrassed by the brazen partisanship of Olberman during the Republican convention. It’s a safe bet that management (above Phil Griffin) realized that NBC was heading down the path of CBS in the loss of credibility that followed the Dan Rather debacle.

    Matthews seems to have suffered his open bias problem due to the publicity Olberman was receiving. He saw that Olberman was the “star” of MSNBC and he must have thought that by imitating the hard left wing line he could regain some of his lost cache.

    Credibility, even with a partisan point of view, is the key to any media success – which translates to money – which this is all about. Rush Limbaugh makes more each year than all the hosts of NBC and MSNBC combined, largely due to the credibility he has with his audience. If Olberman couldn’t even hold the confidence of his fellow NBC employees, he certainly couldn’t make it with the public. The niche of crazed left wingers is too small to cater to if that pandering ruins the credibility of the entire NBC organization.
    • ^
    • v
    @jwest: Crazed left wingers? FOX has been pushing this BS for YEARS!! "Obama's baby momma", "Terrorist Fist Jab". WTF?? It's ok to be a partisan if your a republican? Jeebus you people are blind.
    • ^
    • v
    Although I didn’t mention Fox, their rating success might be due to the fact that they always make a provision for opposing views.

    My point is that there is no problem being partisan, as long as you maintain a high level of credibility.
    • ^
    • v
    The networks are liberal, with the occasional to frequent (heretical) exception of Fox (which is treated accordingly when it is heretical, including on this Web site). Only the dishonest and the "disabled" deny the liberal politics expressed routinely and even methodically by journalists and editors.

    MSNBC is daring to shift to the left of the other left-biased networks, which as a marketing decision is quite interesting. I don't suspect it will become like Democracy Now! or Alternative Radio, or that it will win the acceptance of FAIR (whose name is a laughable lie) and be retaliatory ammunition for "Counter[-]Spin" [sic], but MSNBC certainly wants to be bold and brazen. The "big picture" view I have of this is that it is more evidence of a very recent upsurge in viability of seriously left media programming as a major market item. After nearly twenty years of failure, left-wing radio is starting to do well -- not only in major markets such as here in Detroit, but in the form of various talk hosts who are developing a following, enabling them to gain entry to markets nation-wide. It seems that these people are doing well enough that one of the hosts, Rachel Maddow, is ready to risk a television show, and a network, MSNBC, is willing to risk presenting it as part of a larger movement to go noticeably more to the left of the other liberal networks.

    Olbermann is a prick (and has no credibility) and obviously went too far, but I believe hosting an opinion show like Maddow's is something much more noteworthy.
    • ^
    • v
    Keith Olbermann was embarrassing. My majority Obama supporting family had a consensus that Olbermann may have hurt Obama a little with all his blubbering. But hey, we have folks on both sides doing it so...